Do you have books piling up all over the house that you don’t know what to do with? I mean, we don’t want to throw books out, but the reality is some books were meant to be read just once, right? Well BookMooch is a free community where you can exchange books using a point system. For each book you enter into the system you get a tenth-of-a-point, and for each book you send someone you get a full point. All you do is pay the postage to mail your books to someone who has requested them and in order to keep receiving books you need to give away at least one book for every five that you receive. Hmmm, maybe I’m not explaining that very well, I suggest you go to their site and check it out for yourself!
Tag Archives: books
bats and turtlenecks
As well as having interesting posts about the goings-on in the publishing world over at his blog, Ed Champion’s Return of the Reluctant, he also has some great podcast “radio” interviews with authors. This one is with Nora Ephron, author of the longtime bestseller I Feel Bad About My Neck. Click to take a listen to this funny interview, or go to Ed’s blog and take a gander at the long list of guests that have been interviewed by “Jorge, the alcoholic and blacklisted DJ Bat Segundo, and his Young, Roving Correspondent.” Fun stuff.
then she found me
I just finished reading Elinor Lipman’s, Then She Found Me. It was a fun read about a women who is given up for adoption and is found by her birth mother thirty-six years later. Bernice Graverman is a slightly zany talk show host in Boston who decides the time is right to reunite with her long lost daughter, April Epner, a conservative high school Latin teacher. April’s adoptive mother has recently died and at first she is not interested in forging a relationship of any kind with her flamboyant birth mother. But Bernice and her “toad-sized earrings” won’t go away and eventually they both realize they aren’t so different after all.
Helen Hunt wrote the screenplay for a movie adaptation of the novel and she is also directing and starring in the film along with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick. The casting is dead on and it’s possible that the film, slated for release sometime this year, may even be better than the book! Another one of Ms. Lipman’s books, The Inn at Lake Devine , has just been added to my “To Be Read” pile.
dive into reading
You may have noticed that I like internet gadgets (I’m very easily entertained and distracted). I especially enjoy those that relate to books (I am a bookbabie afterall) and I stumbled across another one yesterday. It’s called Literature-Map. It’s a simple premise, you type in the name of an author you like, hit the “continue” button and you get this cool, floaty lake of author’s names who write similar stuff. Try it out!
wax lips and silly putty
Recently I was looking for a book to read before I went to sleep that wouldn’t cause dysfunctional family, C.I.S.-ish, war and/or grief ridden nightmares and I discovered Bill Bryson’s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid buried in my TBR pile. Bryson is a travel writer who has taken on other subjects in his last few books, writing with the same witty, ironic style that made his travelogues so popular. The Thunderbolt Kid is a memoir of his years growing up in Iowa in the 1950’s, and although bookbabie was born at the very end of the 50’s (practically the 60’s really), much of this book still rang true for me. (Apparently Silly Putty, Slinkys, wax lips, and crazy relatives are institutions of an American childhood no matter when or where you are born!) I’m going to reccomend it to my husband, Mr. Bookbabie, who is closer to Mr. Bryson’s age (much, much older than bookbabie herself). Even though he mostly reads work related stuff, I think he will really enjoy this book. It’s a fun read, particularly for anyone who is a baby boomer, or who raised boomers in the postwar, sleepy fifties – a charmer!
read to me

BookPALS is a site sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild where various actors read children’s books on camera. Haylie Duff reads Romeow and Drooliet, Al Gore reads Brave Irene, and Jane Kaczmarek reads Thank You, Mr. Falker, a book based on the author’s own experience as a little girl who overcomes dyslexia and discovers the joy of reading. A fun site you can share with a child or with that child inside of you that still likes to have someone read them a story!
two thumbs up
Metacritic is a website that takes a cross-section of reviews from national critics and publications and comes up with it’s own rating, or Metascore, for movies, televsion shows, music, books, and games. I looked up some of the books I’ve read in the past and found it pretty much in-line with how much I liked, or disliked a book. A good site to do a little research before you spend your hard earned moolah! Don’t ya just love the internet?
mr. poe and mr. boo
Speaking of mystery and crime fiction, the 2007 Edgar Award nominees were recently announced. First awarded in 1946 by The Mystery Writers of America, the Edgars honor achievement in mystery and crime writing in fiction, non-fiction, movies, television, and motion pictures. They are named after the “father of all mystery writing”, Edgar Allan Poe, who once said, “I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.” Here’s a photo of my daughter’s mysterious kitty-cat, “Mr. Boo”.
